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So this last week, I read another blog about how to restore a ‘veteran’ PC to working life…
There are several linux distributions that keep ties with it’s past. The one recommended was ‘TinyCore‘. After finding out that the smallest is NOT the easiest. [It was only 15 Megabytes!] I downloaded the ‘CorePlus‘. This is small [86 MB] but includes the installation bits and pieces to get a simple system up and running. I then ‘burned’ it to a CD as it comes to you as an ISO image.
After that it was very simple to connect to the fastest mirror and download what extras or essentials, I needed. Like ‘openssh’ and ‘ALSA’ as well as a complete gcc compile system.
I should point out that this was a ‘broken’ Pentium II multimedia laptop. Its screen was a write-off but the rest was functional. The hard disk had been plundered long ago, so finding a suitable and working 2.5 inch drive was tricky.
I found a 4 GB disk in the ‘untested’ pile. Not much use in this day but enough to load and run a ‘small’ system. This ‘small system’ has all the attributes of a modern system. Capable of using USB devices including Ethernet or WiFi dongles. This has meant that the rest of the installation went very quickly.
One thing though, don’t expect to run Firefox in 64 MB of memory. I am now looking for ‘Midori’. Which is a light weight browser and runs quite happily on a Raspberry Pi. It might run on the P2…
This might be the start of something for Ham-Comp.
More later…